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ngrok VS CodePen

Compare ngrok VS CodePen and see what are their differences

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ngrok logo ngrok

ngrok enables secure introspectable tunnels to localhost webhook development tool and debugging tool.

CodePen logo CodePen

A front end web development playground.
  • ngrok Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-22
  • CodePen Landing page
    Landing page //
    2018-09-30

ngrok features and specs

  • Ease of Use
    ngrok simplifies the process of creating secure public URLs to your local web server. It eliminates complex network configurations and is user-friendly even for beginners.
  • Security
    ngrok tunnels are secured with HTTPS, offering a robust way to expose services without compromising security. It supports multiple authentication methods, ensuring a secure connection.
  • Speed of Setup
    Setting up ngrok is quick. You just need to download the executable and run a simple command to get started. This makes it ideal for rapid development and testing.
  • Flexibility
    ngrok supports multiple protocols including HTTP, HTTPS, and TCP, making it versatile for various types of services.
  • Monitoring
    ngrok provides a web interface for monitoring HTTP traffic flowing through the tunnels, which helps in debugging and analytics.
  • Built-in Authentication
    It includes built-in authentication options, enabling you to create protected tunnels easily without needing to configure your web server.

Possible disadvantages of ngrok

  • Pricing
    While ngrok offers a free tier, many advanced features such as custom subdomains, reserved domains, and additional security features require a paid subscription.
  • Latency
    Because your data is routed through an external server, there can be a noticeable increase in latency, which might affect performance especially for real-time applications.
  • Temporary URLs
    The URLs provided in the free tier are temporary and change every time you restart ngrok. This can be inconvenient for long-term use or sharing links.
  • Rate Limits
    The free version has rate limits on the amount of traffic that can be tunneled, which could be restrictive for high-traffic applications.
  • Dependency
    Using ngrok creates a dependency on an external service, which means your tunnels are subject to ngrok’s availability and reliability. Any downtime on ngrok's end can affect your service.
  • Limited Customization
    The free tier offers limited customization options. More advanced customization requires subscription to a paid plan.

CodePen features and specs

  • Real-time Collaboration
    Developers can collaborate with others in real-time, making it easy to work on projects with teammates or seek help from the community.
  • Immediate Visual Feedback
    CodePen allows you to see the results of your code as you write it, which is highly beneficial for learning and debugging.
  • Integrated Development Environment (IDE)
    CodePen provides a comfortable and feature-rich online IDE environment with syntax highlighting, autocomplete, and more.
  • Community-Driven
    Users can share their work with the CodePen community, receive feedback, and explore a wide range of projects created by others.
  • Extensive Resources
    CodePen offers a wealth of examples and templates for various web development tasks, making it a useful resource for learning and inspiration.
  • Cross-Device Accessibility
    Being an online platform, CodePen can be accessed from any device with an internet connection, making it convenient for developers on the move.

Possible disadvantages of CodePen

  • Limited Offline Functionality
    Since CodePen is primarily an online tool, it requires an internet connection for most of its features to work, limiting its usefulness in offline environments.
  • Performance Constraints
    Complex or resource-intensive projects may not perform as well on CodePen as they would in a full-fledged local development environment.
  • Subscription Costs
    While many features are free, advanced functionalities and additional storage options require a paid subscription, which may not be ideal for all users.
  • Limited Backend Capabilities
    CodePen is primarily designed for front-end development, so it offers limited support for backend technologies, making it less suitable for full-stack or server-side development.
  • Dependency Management
    Managing dependencies and libraries can be cumbersome compared to local development environments which have better tools for this purpose, like npm.
  • Security Concerns
    Sharing projects with the public can expose your code and assets to unauthorized use, posing potential intellectual property and security risks.

ngrok videos

EQUIP | The making of ngrok - Alan Shreve (ngrok)

More videos:

  • Tutorial - How to use LPB Software + Easy Ngrok Setup
  • Tutorial - ngrok tutorial -Access your localhost Wordpress theme from anywhere of the world without hosting
  • Review - spynote x loclx

CodePen videos

What Is Codepen?

More videos:

  • Review - Learn to use CodePen from a co-founder of CodePen
  • Review - Using CodePen For Inspiration & Learning

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to ngrok and CodePen)
Testing
100 100%
0% 0
Text Editors
0 0%
100% 100
Localhost Tools
100 100%
0% 0
Programming
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare ngrok and CodePen

ngrok Reviews

Localtonet | Best Ngrok Alternatives
Exposing local web services to the internet is essential for web developers, but it can be a bit challenging. Ngrok has been the most popular tool for this job, but it's not the only option out there. In this article, we'll explore some of the best ngrok alternatives
Source: localtonet.com
Best ngrok alternatives for localhost tunnels
ngrok provides tunnels for ingress through its programmable network edge. Additionally, it offers observability as well as the ability to change traffic parameters such as headers on the go to your apps with no code changes. In order to use ngrok you must download the ngrok client and sign up to get an account.
Source: pinggy.io
7 Ngrok Alternatives & Competitors for App Tunneling, Free & Paid
For example, let’s say you have a web project on your machine written in Python using the Django framework. Your local server will probably run on an URL like http://localhost:8000 ― which is only accessible on your local machine. With a service like Ngrok, you can configure a public URL like https://myapp.ngrok.io in a single command line and have all the traffic from this...
Source: onboardbase.com
Tools for Testing Webhooks
As it supports cross-platforms, download the suitable binary for OS. For Windows, there is only one binary, ngrok.exe. Copy this to the C:\ngrok folder (or wherever preferred) and enter the command below: [code lang=text] ngrok http 7071 -host-header=localhost [/code]
Top 4 BEST Ngrok Alternatives In 2021: Review And Comparison
NgrokUser is required to sign up in order to generate auth token.Supports all 3 protocols.Usage is through ngrok executable (or through node js based library).Offers both free and paid version. Free version has limited but rich functionalities.Subdomains are supported in the paid version.

CodePen Reviews

Best Forums for Developers to Join in 2025
Codepen is a social network for developers to show off their work, ask and answer questions, and exchange ideas. It's like a Reddit for coding and design, with a large community of talented web developers.
Source: www.notchup.com
Top 10 Developer Communities You Should Explore
Codepen is a social development environment that allows developers to showcase their work and experiment with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript in a collaborative space. Codepen’s focus on visual and interactive development makes it an excellent community for front-end developers and designers.
Source: www.qodo.ai
8 Best Replit Alternatives & Competitors in 2022 (Free & Paid) - Software Discover
Codepen is a social development environment for front-end designers and developers. Build and deploy a website, show off your work, build test cases to learn.
Best Online Code Editors For Web Developers
Probably the most popular online code editor. CodePen is fast, easy to use, and allows a web developer to write and share HTML/CSS/JS code online.
Source: techarge.in
Top 25 websites for coding challenge and competition [Updated for 2021]
CodePen is a cool online IDE that allows you to write code in your browser and see the result just as you build it. CodePen challenges is a place for leveling up your skills by building things. Each week, new challenges appear for you to tackle, and the best “Pens” get picked.

Social recommendations and mentions

CodePen might be a bit more popular than ngrok. We know about 503 links to it since March 2021 and only 399 links to ngrok. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

ngrok mentions (399)

  • How to Chat with Gemini 2.5 Pro from VSCode via AI Studio (Free and Unlimited)
    Create a tunnel to my local server using a tool like ngrok. - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
  • I made slack agent without langchain
    If you are testing locally, you can use a service like ngrok to expose your local server to the internet. - Source: dev.to / about 2 months ago
  • SSR Deep Dive for React Developers
    Now, expose the website to the outside world with ngrok (or a similar tool if you have it):. - Source: dev.to / about 2 months ago
  • Fast and secure ingress to remote AIs with ngrok, Deepseek, and Ollama
    Ngrok: You’ll lean on ngrok’s universal ingress platform for securing and persisting ingress to Ollama and the GPU power behind your LLM. Ngrok abstracts away the networking and configuration complexities around securely connecting to remote services, while also layering in authentication, authorization, and observability you’ll need for a viable long-term solution. - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
  • DeepSeek-R1 on Cursor with Ollama
    By default, ollama serve endpoint http://127.0.0.1:11434 but if u direct using the endpoint to cursor I cant be used. So we need ngrok. U can download and login it, then they instruct u to login via auth token. - Source: dev.to / 4 months ago
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CodePen mentions (503)

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What are some alternatives?

When comparing ngrok and CodePen, you can also consider the following products

Pagekite - Bring your localhost servers on-line.

JSFiddle - Test your JavaScript, CSS, HTML or CoffeeScript online with JSFiddle code editor.

localhost.run - Instantly share your localhost environment!

CodeSandbox - Online playground for React

Portmap.io - Expose your local PC to Internet from behind firewall and without real IP address

GitHub - Originally founded as a project to simplify sharing code, GitHub has grown into an application used by over a million people to store over two million code repositories, making GitHub the largest code host in the world.